


GRIT THOSE TEETH!

by jwdickson



Category: Neon Genesis Evangelion, Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann
Genre: Crossover, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-06-07
Updated: 2012-06-07
Packaged: 2017-11-07 05:42:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,420
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/427522
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jwdickson/pseuds/jwdickson
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>During the reality-warping events of Instrumentality, Ikari Shinji finds himself lost in the Anti-Spiral's Extradimensional Labyrinth.  There, he finds confusion, despair, kindred spirits, and something even more important: a choice.</p>
            </blockquote>





	GRIT THOSE TEETH!

_This is the story of a man who is blind to his destiny.  Captured by the machinations of a cruel father and surrounded by terrible creatures beyond his comprehension, he stands uncertain, broken, and alone._

_But a broken soul can be cast anew.  That is the way of the universe._

_***  
_

The first thing Ikari Shinji noticed was the feeling of earth beneath his hands.  The darkness wasn’t that strange, but it seemed just a moment ago that he had been suspended in space, his consciousness blurring into that of the alien _thing_ restrained by the armor of Unit 01.

A fit of claustrophobia gripped him.  He couldn’t decide if this was preferable.

The next thing that registered was that there were people in this place with him.  An unfamiliar voice urged on another party, and throughout it all was a low scraping sound accompanied by periodic showers of soil.

Then something cracked, and dim light poured down into the tunnel, silhouetting the two individuals in front of him.  Shinji blinked owlishly.

One, the taller of the two (Kamina?  Jeeha?  Where’d that name come from?) turned to him and beckoned.  “Shinji, kid, c’mon!”

Without thinking, he followed Kamina up through the tunnel, lifted himself out, and stopped for a second.

That’s right.  They were robbing a jewelry store.  Wait.  Why does that make perfect sense?  Oh well.  So far it’s a definite improvement over his former circumstances.  Was that all a daydream?  Doesn’t matter.  Kamina just pressed a sack into his hand.  Right.  Time to go to work.

Behind him, Kamina and Simon (Simon?  Who the hell is Simon?) spoke to each other hurriedly.  Well, mostly it was Kamina who spoke, with barely-contained glee at the array of glittering baubles under glass.

Shinji laid eyes on a pair of bright orange pointed sunglasses draped over with necklaces.  They seemed to be there for a reason, but he couldn’t remember.  For a moment, it was like he found himself in someone else’s head, seeing things he’d never seen.  A strangely familiar sensation…

 _Later, buddy_.

Shinji shook his head and rubbed at his eyes.

“Shinji!  Pick up the pace!  We don’t have all night!”

Shinji nodded, the feeling of psychic disorientation fading away, and began to shovel things into his sack.  Starting with the orange shades.

***

It had rained heavily the night before.  At least, Shinji thought it had.  It made sense, as they stood hidden beneath the lip of a barred street drain, obscured by the falling water as the police rushed past above.

It took a moment for Shinji to process that he’d never been in this situation before.  This was his first job.  What happened next?  A lantern clicked on, and he watched mutely as Kamina removed a single emerald ring from his bulging sack and presented it to Simon with all the gravity of a coronation, speaking words that were lost in the rush of the water.

Perhaps he would come into his reward next?

“No loot for newbies,” Kamina told Shinji, slinging the sack back over his shoulder.

***

Seated in a restaurant, piles of food in front of him.  It was warm, comforting.  The clinking of dishes and smell of roast meat glided across his senses.  Did any time at all pass between then and now?  Something very strange was going on, but Shinji couldn’t place it.  Had things always been this disjointed?  Could he just not remember?  Images paraded past his mind’s eye.  Living in a cave, eking out something that could barely be called a life.  No, that wasn’t real.  Was it?  At the back of his brain he felt a vast eldritch consciousness edged with familiarity nudge his psyche.  He dismissed it in favor of trying the unidentifiable meat on his plate.

Delicious.  Definite improvement over NERV fare.

NERV?  Where did that come from?

Kamina was going on about making a living under Teppelin City.  Shinji’s brow creased.  That doesn’t sound famili—no.  Teppelin.  The Capital.  Residence of the Spiral King.  White gloves, orange glasses.  No.  Not the Spiral King.

Who wears white gloves and orange glasses?

Shinji rubbed his forehead.

“Hey kid,” Kamina mumbled through a mouthful of food, gripping a bone strung with scraps of meat.  “Buck up.  We did good today.”

Shinji smiled softly, nodding.  _Right.  We did._

***

Mist hung close to the ground.  Mist hung close to the ground, and an assembly of anthropomorphized ambulatory aardvarks aimed a veritable arsenal at him.  Nothing seemed especially unusual about this to Shinji.  They were clearly police.  Unfriendly relations with police were always a risk when one is a professional thief.

Large metal crates punctuated the mist.  Crates?  Coffins.  Coffins?  Yes.  That seemed right.  Was he here to die?  That would be a relief.  At least the anteaters were much lower on the ladder of surreality than the bleeding rot and pain of the daydream.

Not a daydream.  Reality.  But if that agony was reality, what was this?  He looked to Simon for guidance, but only found matching confusion.  The other boy was just as lost as he was.  …Strangely, it seemed to be the _same_ kind of lost.  They couldn’t _both_ have been uprooted from their realities, could they?

What was reality, anyway?  For a moment he got the distinct impression that he was a girl…but dressed in his clothes and speaking in his voice.  Where the hell did that come from?  Things were moving far too quickly.  There was no chance to get a grip on anything.

The only sound was Kamina groveling, begging the police for leniency.  For some reason, that repulsed Shinji.  He had asked for forgiveness, yes, when he was lost and alone, but had he scraped and crawled on his belly and debased himself for anything less than his life, the lives of others?  Pleaded to whatever passed for God, when terrible things from the stars (not angels, angels were good, angels were pure) were tormenting his friends and he could do nothing about it, when those same _things_ turned their baleful, eyeless gazes on him (stop it stay out of my head why do you do this), when his own horrible cyborg titan refused to bend to his will, when it was trapped inside its own body by the devices of men (please move please please please).  But never for something so insignificant as this.

Where were these images coming from?  Again, the man with orange glasses and white gloves.  Father?  No.  Not really.  Shinji couldn’t feel anything, like he was watching a film while on a morphine drip.

Prison seemed so…unimpressive.  Why were the pointed orange shades in his hand?  Had they always been there?

Suddenly, he got the distinct sense that someone was standing behind him.

Kamina, shirtless, caped, and armed.

He turned back around.  Kamina, scraping and weak.

Shinji dropped heavily to his knees and covered his head.  Too much.  At least some things had made sense, but this was too much.  Two of them.  Why two of them?

“Bro…” he heard Simon say.

“Simon.”  A beat.  “Who’s he?”

“Ikari Shinji,” was Simon’s response.  “He’s...you know, I don’t know.”

“Well, listen up!”

Shinji felt a hand grip his shirt collar and hoist him to his feet.  He refused to make eye contact with this strange new Kamina.

Kamina took the shades from Shinji’s hand and donned them.

Red hair.  Why was he remembering red hair?  Red hair and red blood.

“Looks like you _both_ need a talking to!  I don’t know how you got here, Ikari, but puff out that chest and straighten that backbone!  You have a _choice_ to make!  You too, Simon!”

A choice?  What choice?  He heard his question echoed by Simon.  What kind of place was this, that made him choose?  He can’t choose.  They made it _seem_ like there was a choice, but really there never was.  Suffer or watch the world burn.

Asuka.  Red hair.  Red blood.  _Red_.  Form and personality.  She never stopped, even at the end.  She was still fighting.  She knew what she fought for.  What was _he_ fighting for?

“Choose!” the armed Kamina thundered.  “Me…”  He pointed at the bowing, scraping man before the police.  “Or him!”

_I don’t know either of you, how can I choose?!  Who are you?  WHO THE HELL ARE YOU?_

A hand grasped his shirt, threw him to his knees.

Groveling Kamina was hissing in his ear.  To beg and plead and scrape and maybe make it through this.  What had happened?  When had everything gone wrong?  He couldn’t remember.  It all seemed so long ago.

His shoulders started to quake, tears stinging the corners of his eyes.  It was all too much.  Just too mu—

A finger lighted under his chin, lifting his face up.

Asuka?

“Idiot Shinji,” she said fondly.  “Now isn’t the time.”

She extended a hand.  He turned his head away.  Nobody could help.  Not now.  Not after everything that he’d been through.  The flaying of his sanity was almost complete.  Why couldn’t they just let him sink into mad oblivion?  Why keep pulling him back from the brink?

“Because there are people fighting for you, just as you longed to fight for me.”

There were other people standing behind Asuka.  Misato?  Kaji?  Had they just appeared, or had they always been there, waiting and watching?

No.  If they had been there, he wouldn’t have felt so alone.  It was all in his head, his mind fracturing under the stresses of the Evangelion…

It all came back to him, and he almost crumpled under the weight of it.  Asuka caught him, held him up, even as he sobbed uncontrollably into her shoulder.  What is this?  What is going on?

“Instrumentality, Shinji,” Misato said gently.

“The annihilation of individuality,” Kaji added.

“It can continue, or it can stop here and now,” Asuka said, stroking Shinji’s hair.  “That is your choice.”

Not a choice, never was a choice…

“A man’s always got a choice!”

Shinji turned to see Kamina pointing a finger to the heavens, feet spread wide atop the metal coffin.

“Even when all seems hopeless, the seething of your blood will let you break through!  Even when death is staring you down, there is always another way!  If a man believes in himself, he can never be trapped!”  Kamina stepped down off the coffin, cape flaring.  “Belief is will, will is fighting spirit, and with fighting spirit, all things are possible!”

Shinji felt Asuka steady him, put him on his feet again.  He couldn’t meet her eyes, or any of those surrounding him.

“He’s right, Shinji,” said another voice, a soft one.

Shinji closed his eyes.  “Ayanami…Rei.”

“You just have to believe.”

“I can’t.  _I can’t_.  What is there to believe in?”

“Yourself.  You saved Toji and Kensuke.”

“But Toji…”

“You killed Zeruel, when no one else could,” said Misato.

“But I ran…”

“You also came back.”  Kaji grinned, putting an arm across Misato’s shoulders.

Shinji shook, tears spilling from his clenched eyes.

“Yo, Simon.  Sounds like this kid has done some amazing shit.”

“Sounds like,” Simon said.  But his voice was suddenly deeper.

Shinji looked.  Simon was a young man, now, not a boy.  Not like him.

Kamina’s eyes cut sideways, and he startled back.  “Oi!  When did you get taller than me?!”

Simon smiled in response, then returned his attention to Shinji.  “Anyone who has done what you have is worthy of a place in Team Dai-Gurren.”

Kamina crossed his arms over his chest.  “Whatever you say, Great Leader.”  He plucked the shades from his face and tossed them, shuriken-style, to stick in the ground at Shinji’s feet.  “You’ll be needing these.”

Shinji didn’t move to pick them up.

“You have a choice,” Rei said.  The wind rustled her school uniform, hissed over the surface of her plugsuit, caressed her bare skin all at once.  “A choice I never knew I had.  A choice I only discovered at the ending of the world, when of all things in it you were the only one who mattered.  You can be your father’s son, and let the world end—let the sadness and the pain of living go away…or you can be Ikari Shinji, and relish all the world has to offer.  What is joy without sadness, or pleasure without pain?”

Kamina laid a hand on Shinji’s shoulder.  “What’s the amazing without the ordinary, huh?”

“You’ve got one shot at this, to put an end to all of it,” Misato said.  “No more Angels, no more Eva.  But you’ve got to go back, and you’ve got to take your destiny in your own hands.”

“But it’s already begun,” Shinji said.  “It’s too much.  Rei, you’ve already…”

“There’s nothing that’s been started that a member of Team Dai-Gurren couldn’t stop!” Kamina declared.  “A man’s soul can stop armies in their tracks!”

Simon clenched a fist.  “Bring galaxies to their knees!”

“And most importantly, it can blaze a path to the world _you_ want.”  Kamina jabbed a finger into Shinji’s chest, finally prompting the younger man to look up to him.  “So you just gotta ask yourself, Shinji: what sort of life do you want?”  Kamina caught the shades embedded in the ground with the tip of his sandal and flipped them into the air.  He caught them, and pressed them into Shinji’s hand.  “Kick common sense to the curb to make the impossible possible.  _That_ is how Team Dai-Gurren rolls.”

“Team…Dai-Gurren?”

“That’s right, kid.  And don’t you forget it.”  Kamina grinned.  “Now, LET ME SEE YOU GRIT THOSE TEETH!”

Shinji didn’t see the haymaker coming.

***

Ikari Shinji came to, surrounded by warm, blood-tainted LCL.

Evangelion Unit 01 hung suspended in space, impaled by mass-produced Lances, surrounded by birdlike monstrosities arranged in a Sephirotic constellation.

Shinji blinked, registering the pain of the Eva’s wounds, and noticed there was something in his right hand.

A pair of orange, pointed sunglasses.

He considered them for a moment.  In some ways, so much like his father’s…in others, as different as could possibly be.

Shinji’s heart raced.  A choice.  That’s what he had…a choice.  A choice that had been given to him not only by Rei, but by Asuka.  Kaji.  Misato.  And those two whose names were already fading from his memory, so much like Toji, running on nothing but muscles and raw determination...

He had a choice.  What kind of world _did_ he want to live in?

Ikari Shinji set his mouth in a solemn line.

And he put the glasses on.


End file.
